g letters, and among them the following:--

This is to giv' notis, Captin Furster, av you'll live
and let live, and be quite an' pacable--divil a rason is
there, why you need be afeard--but av you go on among the
Leatrim boys--as that bloody thundhering ruffin Ussher, by
the etarnal blessed Glory, you wul soon be streatched as
he war--for the Leatrim boys isn't thim as wul put up with
it.

This was only one of many that he received--and these, together with
the futility of his first attempt--a tremendous stoning which he and
his men received in the neighbourhood of Drumshambo--the burning of
Cogan's cabin, and the fate of his predecessor, totally frightened
him; and he represented to the head office in Dublin that the country
was in such a state, that he was unable, with the small body of men
at his command, to carry on his business with anything approaching to
security.

These things all operated much against the chance of Thady's
acquittal, and his warmest friends could not but feel that they did
so. People in the country began to say that some severe example
was necessary--that the country was in a dreadful state--and that
the government must be upheld; and these fears became ten times
greater, when it was generally known that Thady, a day or two before
the catastrophe, had absolutely associated with some of the most
desperate characters in the country.

Brady, at first, had been unwilling to divulge all that he knew to
Mr. Keegan; for, though he felt no hesitation in betraying his old
master, he was not desirous to hang him; but Keegan, by degrees, got
it all out of him, and bribed so high that Pat, at last, consented to
come forward at the trial and swear to all the circumstances of the
meeting at Mrs. Mehan's, and the attorney lost no time in informing
the solicitor, who was to conduct the prosecution on behalf of the
crown, what this witness was able to prove.

All this was sad news for Father John, and his friend McKeon, but
still they would not despair. They talked the matter over and over
again in McKeon's parlour, and Tony occasionally almost forgot his
punch in his anxiety to put forward and make the most of all those
points, which he considered to be in Thady's favour. It was not only
the love of justice, his regard for the family of the Macdermots,
and Father John's eloquence which had enlisted McKeon so thoroughly
in Thady's interest,--though, no doubt, these three things h